


Whole Lotta Rosie

by Guu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Sam POV, healing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1697177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guu/pseuds/Guu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam takes care of his brother after the events that bring the saving of the world. Dean's recovery is slow and tortuous, but with love, patience and the help of a long lost friend, it may not be as hard as Sam belives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whole Lotta Rosie

 

Some time after--well, _everything_ \--Cas comes back to the bunker. It's been a couple of years since he last saw the Winchesters, but he still knocks on the door and says hello like he hasn't been absent for the past five years or so.

It's taken time to get here, Sam knows. It's taken them all they had to keep their heads above the water. They caused too much pain; they said too many horrible things. Dean has been trying to take things one day at a time: years of PTSD weigh on his shoulders, but Sam thinks they're getting there. He looks at his brother, and every day sees less and less the broken shell of the man that he dragged into the bunker all those years ago. Dean drinks coffee in the mornings now, and he oversleeps when he can. He even sings in the shower, sometimes. And some other times, he just stares quietly into the distance, or at a wall, with a glossy, lost look in his green eyes, but that is okay, as well. As he said, one day at a time.

Dean has also not left the bunker in five years.

And then Cas comes back, just like that. Sam wakes up one morning and finds him sitting on the only chair in the library that has resisted Dean's early rage bouts. Castiel hasn't aged a day, which shouldn't surprise Sam, really, because he's an angel, and angels don't do that sort of thing, but Sam looks into the mirror and sees hollow cheeks and sunken eyes; he has washed Dean's hair as all of Dean’s dirty blonde locks slowly turned into white.

Cas, meanwhile, is.... Cas. He's the same scruffy guy with the nest of a hairdo, day old stubble and big, blue puppy eyes, and it hits Sam like a brick that he has missed this guy. Every day, for the past five years, every time he's had to hold Dean through sobbing or vomiting or silent spells, Sam has silently prayed for Cas to return. He knew Dean wasn't doing it, and somebody _had to_. Just like somebody had to put Dean back together. Just like somebody had to _be_ there, somebody had to take the brunt of it, to take charge. For so long, that person had been Dean, and this time it had to be Sam.

Cas looks sheepish on his chair, is still being swallowed by his trenchcoat, still transparent and so damn easy to read, that Sam forgets about all his unanswered prayers and pulls him into a hug. Things have been good, _better_ , and now Cas is home again.

At least that’s what Sam hopes. But he doesn’t ask. No. Instead he says, “Hey, Cas.”

They sit together for a while. Dean doesn’t come to the library, and Cas doesn’t inquire after him. They make small talk, like everything is right. Like Dean isn’t--wasn’t--a mess. Like Cas didn’t fuck off to god knows where. But Sam digresses. Baby steps. Cas is here, and, before he leaves, he promises to stop by again.

Two weeks later, Cas shows up at ten in the morning with two boxes of authentic italian pizza. Which would be great at not ten in the morning, but Sam will take his victories where he can. Who said pizza couldn’t make an incredible breakfast. It does.

Dean is sitting on the couch when Sam goes after him. He’s been quiet all night, watching reruns of one thing or another, hasn’t slept in a couple of days, but Sam has sometimes managed to get him to eat something. Cas gasps when he sees Dean, or at least Sam thinks he does, because when he turns back, Cas isn’t there anymore.

A month goes by, maybe a bit more. Sam gets violently sick and sees Dean going through an attempt to _care_ , to take care of him, but it’s rather futile, and what should have been a two-day affair ends up as Sam suffering through a two-week cold with small surges of fever in between. They run out of Tylenol, and Sam feels that this is where he will draw the line.

He drops to his knees in the middle of the night, after nearly coughing his throat out, and croaks:

“Cas. This is your _family_ , and we need you.”

Whatever happens after that is beyond Sam, but he wakes up to clear sinuses and a very unusual smell coming from the kitchen.

It’s _coffee_. The actual, real life kind, not the instant shit he has been able to afford on their tiny budget for the past five years. And it smells glorious, but is nothing compared to the sight of Dean standing in the kitchen, _making it_. Sam thinks he might cry. He would hug Dean if he didn’t know how averse to human contact Dean has become, so he doesn’t. But he thinks about it, and he projects it to his brother, hoping he will know that Sam is holding back. He doesn’t say anything, and Dean doesn’t say where the beans have come from. Cas doesn’t get mentioned, but Sam knows, and that knowledge is all he cares about right now. They have a cup of coffee each, and for once, Dean smiles as he drinks it.

 --

Cas’ visits become more frequent after that. He never stays for long, but he _comes bac_ k. Sam finds him standing quietly in corners, watching Dean from afar, or waiting after Sam late at night, in the kitchen, with treats brought from around the world, or books or trinkets he thinks Sam will like. Cas has become a _creature_ again, something unfathomable that Sam can’t fully understand, and he wonders sometimes if Cas remembers what it was to be human at all, but just the fact that he keeps coming might be a greater indicator than he is willing to show. Sam can cut him some slack.

 --

On a Monday morning, well into the autumn months, Cas follows Dean through a dusty hallway. Sam can’t see Cas, but he’s grown used to the kind of silence that reigns when he is around. It feels different, or so he thinks, and it compels him to walk out of bed and follow his brother into the room where they set the TV. Dean seems lighter, somehow. Fuller. Sometimes it feels like he’s not even there, but it’s not just his body roaming the hallways that day.

Dean stalls before he even makes it to the couch. Stops his steps and says, “I know you’re there,” and for some reason Sam understands he’s not addressing him. He wonders, for a moment, if Cas will bail out, but he hears a short gasp and the _presence_ of Cas grows, solidifies. There’s a man in a trench coat standing besides Dean now, and he looks whole.

 --

Things progress. Not at a very high speed, but Sam can see it, here and there. Dean attempts to cook sometimes, when Cas is around, simple things that won’t leave him exhausted, and Cas sits and tries whatever Dean puts on his plate. When Dean sits on the couch and Cas sits close--not close enough to touch, but close--Dean doesn’t flinch. Sometimes, Dean even lets Cas man the remote. And so on.

Cas stays for a night first. Dean has a heavy relapse a few days after he leaves, unrelated to Cas’ parting, but it seems to stir something in the angel, because he comes back to Sam’s pleas and Dean alternating between trying to punch Sam’s face and crying desperately on the floor, and he doesn’t leave Dean’s side for a week. He waits for Dean outside the bathroom door, stands like a soldier at the foot of his bed while Dean doesn’t sleep. He feels guilty, Sam knows, and guilt has never been a very good friend of them.

“Cas,” he calls on the seventh day, when it looks like Dean is as stable as he’s going to get. Cas looks a bit more ragged than he would normally, his coat askew in lieu of his tie, his eyes bright with something like fear. “This is not an obligation,” Sam explains. He looks Cas in the eye, hoping his words will plow through. “We’re not your duty. Dean is mine, yeah. But not yours. Don’t let him become a burden. He would punch you for that. You know, the _real_ him.”

Sam thinks he sees a smile on Cas’ face before he disappears.

 --

By the end of the winter, Cas’ presence in the bunker is a common occurrence. He follows Dean around when Dean feels good enough to allow it, and tells Dean about the woods outside, how the world is changing, about the plants and trees that are growing around their home. Cas talks about the sun, about the bees, about trivial little things that almost always grab Dean’s attention, even when he pretends they don’t. There’s something left of Dean, in there, and Cas seems to know how to look for it, even when Sam is not even sure that part of Dean can be reached anymore.

One day, Cas comes _home_ with a pot of wild roses and presents it to Dean as a gift. At first, Dean looks puzzled, but on days after that, Sam often walks in to catch Dean watering the plant and talking to it, or moving it around to whichever room he feels like sitting quietly in. It’s warm in the bunker, and the plant grows, unfazed by the upcoming snow outside. Dean even _names_ it. Rosie, he says, after an AC/DC song, and Sam is surprised to know Dean can still recall the music he hasn’t played in so long. Dean is a quiet guy now, so there is no music is the bunker, but there is Rosie, and sometimes there is Castiel too.

Rosie grows steadily, slowly, its first buds drying and falling before they can blossom. Sam finds the pot shoved under a kitchen cabinet one afternoon after he’s spent three days looking for it, and finds its petals have grown brown and paper thin. Dean had forgotten about it, suddenly, as he’d fallen into a week long depression that had him hiding in his bed.

“It will be okay,” Sam murmurs to himself. Or to Rosie. He doesn’t know for sure. He drags the plant from beneath the sink and waters it, lovingly, as he has seen Dean do. “It has to be okay,” he says, to himself.

 --

Dean gets better, eventually. He seems sorry about what happened to the wild rose plant, but however much he waters it, the thing looks like a lost cause. Fearing a relapse, Cas gets him another plant. And another, and then another. Soon, Dean has enough plants to build a garden of their own, so they search together for a room with high walls and tiny windows and place the myriad of plants inside, and Sam is shocked that he has never thought about this before. Dean is, and has always been, a nurturer. Given a cause, he will stick to it: this time, that cause are his plants. Living beings that will never ask him to go to hell for them. Dean is in his element, and it is through this that his healing begins anew.

Most mornings, Dean wakes up and makes watering rounds. He names each and every plant after random comic book heroes, and cracks jokes at them when he thinks nobody is within hearing range. In the plant room, he makes Cas sit by his side, after Sam has fixed him something to eat, and they sit in silence, just watching the plants grow. On a spectacularly successful day, Dean leans into Cas’ shoulder and asks him to tell him about the weather. These days, Cas is good at idle talk, so he complies.

Sam feels grateful that he can do things now, like going to the nearest town for groceries or taking small jobs here or there, just being out, seeing the sky. It seems like such a change that he’s finally counting the good days by the dozen.

 --

Dean has to learn how to tease Cas all over again. Cas’ knowledge of popular culture is vast, greater than even Dean’s, but Dean is nothing if not persistent, and he finds out how to turn Cas’ knowledge against him. It’s beautiful. Sam doesn’t think he’s ever seen something quite so remarkable as the way Dean’s face contorts when something flies completely over Cas’ head. Because Dean _laughs_ now, too. His eyes crinkle, and a soft sound comes out of his mouth, and it’s better than any kind of music will ever sound. Dean laughs. Sam can’t stop beaming.

Dean is laughing.

 --

Cas settles in the bunker when it looks like he’s finally accepted the fact that he belongs there. He picks a room and fills it with _stuff_. Sam stopped asking about it after the second day or so. Cas has brought in all kinds of seemingly useless things: a three-legged victorian chair, an old computer that he never uses, a blue rounded pillow, a deck of cards. The brothers let him be, because he seems content to dump things all over his room, if only for the fact that he can do that now.

“It’s my room,” he says, to the plants. “I live here now.” Unlike the rambles Dean often directs at his rosebuds, Sam has a strong suspicion that Cas actually means for them to understand what he tells them. Just in case, Sam doesn’t ask.

 --

Spring comes on a Wednesday, and Sam spends the whole afternoon working at an organic farm. He comes back to the bunker, sweaty and with sun-kissed skin, to find his brother and the angel sitting on the floor in the library, in complete silence. Dean has a frown on his face, but his back is leaning heavily against Cas’, which Sam takes as a good sign. He goes back to the field day after day for a few weeks, and more and more he starts to believes that Dean’s intermittent glances at Sam’s newly-tanned skin carry a hint of longing, as if he is missing the sun himself.

On another day, Sam crosses the bunker’s threshold to find Dean, screaming and thrashing. Sam’s heart stammers in his chest, and he runs down the stairs, tripping on the last step. He expects Dean to be having another violent outburst, like before, but when he gets closer to where the voices are coming from, he realises that Dean and Cas are having an honest to God argument. Dean is yelling at Cas, yes, but he’s saying _words_. Words that make _sense_. Sam isn’t sure whether he should be more or less worried, and he approaches the two very slowly, afraid that the screaming match will turn into something worse.

He catches the end of Dean’s last sentence before Cas makes one of his infamous acts of disappearance:

“ _...and fuck off and abandon us like you always fucking do_.”

Dean is red in the face, and Sam stands still at the door, holding his breath. _Please don’t make it worse_ , he begs in his head. Dean scowls, and he deflates, but unlike the thousands of other times, he composes himself.

“I might have overreacted,” he says, after a while, and Sam thinks he’s going to fucking cry.

 --

Cas takes the week off, but he does return. Dean waits for him nearly every day, sitting still by the door, with Rosie’s pot as his only company. He has managed to coax the plant back into life, a new sprout of green growing out of the ones he’d let die, and Sam thinks, isn’t that a perfect metaphor for how Dean loves, and how everything else loves him in return? Fiercely, and against all odds.

Like Rosie, Castiel can’t bear to disappoint Dean. He shows up, repentant and ashamed that he let himself get carried away. He regals Dean with tales of the outside world, bringing with him a pot of rare cacti and an sincere apology for his words. Dean takes them all.

He shows Cas how Rosie has grown.

That night Sam makes a pot of chili, or he _tries_ , and the three of them settle around the TV set. It seems surreal that such a mundane thing can fill Sam with such hope and trepidation, but it goes well. Dean falls asleep, slumping against Sam like a dead weight, and Sam bears it like a martyr, as if all these years of pain and exhaustion haven’t made him weak at all. He wakes Dean shortly after midnight, and between himself and Cas, they manage to take Dean back to his own bed and tuck him in. Seeing Dean sleeping so soundly feels like a victory to Sam, but it makes something deep inside him feel like it’s breaking, and before he can think about it, he’s got tears in his eyes and all six feet of an angel holding him tightly.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into Cas’ shoulder, “thank you so much.”

 --

Rosie sprouts a bud sometime in May. Dean is so happy that he seems to bounce around the bunker like an over-excited child. He makes plans (for what? Sam doesn’t know), and he bugs Cas into genuine annoyance to help Dean rearrange all his plants. This is the most positively active Sam has seen his brother since… well. Since a very long time. So much so that when Dean trips on a broken pot and Sam puts a hand over Dean’s chest to stop his fall, Sam--and not Dean--is the one to flinch at the touch.

“You okay, little brother?” Dean teases, and Sam can barely contain his shock.

When Sam wakes up the next day, Dean is sitting patiently by the bunker’s door, with Cas in tow. Rosie rests besides them, and Sam wonders if he should ask what’s going on before or after he’s had his coffee, but curiosity takes the best of him.

“What are you guys doing there?” he asks, his voice still gravely from sleep. Dean turns, as though he just realised Sam was there.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, his voice small. Cas is peering at him curiously, and from the look in his eyes, Sam thinks he knows as much about this whole affair as Sam does.

“You better put some clothes on,” Dean continues. He grabs the plant that’s by his side, hands slightly trembling as they curl around the orange pot. “I think it’s time we plant Rosie where she belongs.”

Sam has never put on clothes so quickly before.

 --

Outside, the sun is shining. There are rain clouds in the distance, but it will be sunny for much longer. Sam does the actual planting, at a spot they find between a cluster of small trees, while Cas holds an umbrella over Dean’s head. It’s been five years since Dean’s last venture into the real world. He looks wary and tired, but there’s a smile on his face.

_We’re good_ , Sam thinks, _we’re gonna be okay_. It doesn’t sound like a plea this time.

When the planting is done, the sun hovers directly over their heads. They’re sitting on a fallen log, looking at Rosie and her new bud. Lunchtime is approaching, and Sam’s stomach makes a small noise, reminding him he hasn’t even had his coffee yet. He gets up from the log, patting the dirt out of his black sweatpants.

“I’m gonna start making lunch. Meet you there?”

Dean nods absently, still hung up on all the beauty and warm sunlight surrounding him.

“In a minute,” he says, his voice gentle with wonder, while Cas gives Sam a more assertive nod in reply. Sam leaves, feeling lightheaded. He comes back out about an hour later to let them know lunch is ready, and he finds the two of them standing on the green grass, looking at the sky and holding hands.

_Baby steps_ , Sam reminds himself, with a small smile to himself. Although, perhaps, this was the longest baby step taken of them all.

 --

fin.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece after the weekend's general sadness. It was supposed to be a happy thing but it really went its own way. I still think there's a lot of hope in it! Hope for healing and for better things to come, which are always there if we know where to look.
> 
> I for sure hope everyone is doing better now.
> 
> As usual, beta-ed and polished by Dusty, who has saved half my drafts so far (lol) ♥


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